He followed the rope to where it was caught on a twisted chunk of coral that stuck out from one part of the giant cylinder like a broken bird wing. Nick used the crowbar to chip away the barnacles. He saw the dark pewter of metal, tarnished like unpolished silver. It was some kind of ship’s hull. Blown apart. Maybe hit by a bomb years ago. How long had it been here? What kind of ship was it?
The other section was scattered about one hundred feet away. Both pieces of the ship were half buried in the sand like the remnants of a giant’s toy long ago forgotten and left in an underwater sandbox.
Nick had an eerie feeling sweep through his body. Maybe it’s an underwater grave? He used the crowbar to work the anchor. It was lodged in the twisted metal as if it was caught in the petrified jaw of an extinct leviathan whose gaping mouth had turned to stone.
A moray eel slid from a cranny underneath the structure. It darted by Nick’s leg and retreated to another massive piece of pretzel-like metal thick with barnacles. Nick pulled the knife out of its sheath on his belt and began scraping away barnacles so he could see where to apply the crowbar.
He saw it out of the corner of his left eye. Something white. Motionless. Something very out of place.
Nick looked farther inside the hull. A human skeleton was trapped upright like a scarecrow in shards of torn metal and dappled bluish light. It seemed to stare back at Nick. The eye cavities dark and vacant. Small fish swam through the shattered rib cage. The skull’s lower jawbone was gone. There was a second skeleton lying in a fetal position near a crushed table.
Nick felt cold. A chill ran through his body as he sucked in the compressed, cool oxygen a tad too quick. He made the sign of the cross, dropped the crowbar at his feet, and swam for the surface toward the promise of bright sky and warm air.
CHAPTER SIX
“There he is!” shouted Jason as Nick popped to the surface about thirty feet off the bow. O’Brien nodded and cut the diesels, letting Nick swim to the dive platform behind the cockpit.
“Sean!” yelled Nick, kicking the fins and paddling to the stern.
O’Brien knew something had shaken up Nick. He scaled down the ladder to the cockpit. Max and Jason joined him as Nick tossed the fins up on the platform, removed his face mask and said, “Somebody get me a beer!”
“You see a shark or something?” Jason asked.
“I saw something! That’s for damn sure.” Nick touched the cross hanging around his neck before he pulled himself up on the platform. “Sean, you got the damn anchor caught in the gates of hell!”
O’Brien smiled. “I’ve told you not to dive down so fast. Deprives oxygen from the brain.” He grinned and tossed a towel to Nick.
“I’m freakin’ serious as a heart attack.”
“Was the anchor caught on a reef?”
“A manmade reef. Looks like you caught an old submarine.”
“A what?”
Jason handed Nick a beer. “A sub! Cool. Maybe it was from the war, the Germans or even the Japs. Dude, I want to see it.”
Nick took a long pull from the can, wiped the foam from his mustache with the back of a hand and shook his head. “No you don’t. Place is full of bodies.”
“Bodies?” Jason’s eyes popped.
“Skeletons, man. Long time ago picked clean by crabs and whatnot. I feel bad for whoever those guys are … were.” Nick sipped the beer and flopped in a deck chair. He set the beer at his feet and extended both hands. “I’m shakin’ like a damn leaf.”
O’Brien said, “Where was the anchor?”
“Caught in a bunch of twisted metal. Looks like whatever’s down there got hit by a bomb or something. Blew the thing in half. That was what we saw on the sonar. The straight lines, man. They are two long pieces from a submarine.”
“A sub! That’s pretty wild,” Jason said.
“How many bodies did you see?” O’Brien asked. “Where exactly were they?”
“Right inside the biggest piece of the sub. Saw at least two. The freaky thing is one of ‘em is caught in the splintered metal. It’s kinda like the poor dude was running or something. Sort of blew up in his face and caught him from fallin’ down. Spooky. No, it looks evil.” Nick touched the crucifix lying against his chest, picked up his beer, and drained the can, crushing it with one hand.
O’Brien knelt down by Max and rubbed her behind the ears. “Could be a lost sub from World War II. Did you see any identification, insignias, or any numbers?”
“Sean, you’re back in cop mode. It’s not some crime scene.”
“Is the anchor still stuck?”
“Yeah. After I saw the stick man standing there at the door, fish swimmin’ outta the fuckin’ eye sockets, I sort of lost it and headed north. Dropped the crowbar.”
“Let’s go get it,” O’Brien said smiling.
Nick’s eyebrows arched. “Go get it? That’s a freakin’ graveyard! Got to respect the dead! Let it be. I shoulda let you do like you wanted-cut the damn rope.”
“I’ll go with you, Sean,” Jason said, glancing down at the crushed can of beer.
O’Brien put his arm around Jason’s shoulder. “It’s pretty deep. Nick will go back down. He’s done a thousand dives at this depth. If we have two divers down, we’ll need a man on deck for safety. We need you up here, okay?”
“No problem. I saw that underwater camera up in the fly bridge. Maybe when you go down you could snap a couple of pictures?”
“Good idea. I’ll get it.” O’Brien climbed back to the bridge. He picked up the small digital camera with the underwater housing. He looked down into the cockpit where Nick was preaching to Jason about desecrating the dead. Maybe the less the kid knew, the better, O’Brien thought. If it was a relic from World War II, what was it doing sixty miles off the Florida coast? And why was the sub never spotted? Leave well enough alone. He glanced at the GPS numbers and committed them to memory.
Max barked. From the bridge, O’Brien could see a sailboat less than two hundred yards off starboard. He could tell a woman was sunning near the bow and wore nothing but her sun block. He disconnected the GPS and climbed down the ladder.
“Check out the sailboat,” Jason said.
“Better check out the lady on deck,” Nick said, standing and inhaling through his nostrils like a bull snorting.
O’Brien said, “Jason, while Nick and I are down there, if any boat approaches, just make casual conversation. At this time, it’s probably not smart to talk about some sunken submarine. There’ll be a time and place. Okay?”
Jason half smiled. “No problem. I’ll hang out with Max.”
O’Brien turned to Nick. “You good to go back down?”
“It goes against my Greek Orthodox religion. But as scared as I was starin’ into the face of skeletons, I’m more afraid to let you go down there alone to get your anchor.”
“How much sunlight is getting to the bottom?”
“Could use a flashlight to see farther in the hull. Not that I really want to see.”
O’Brien opened a storage compartment and took out two underwater flashlights. He said, “I guess the only way to see what’s there is to take a look.” He slipped on a pair of fins and a mask and then knelt to lift the tank onto his back.
As O’Brien and Nick stood on the dive platform, adjusted their masks and tested their regulators, Nick said, “You got no fear for this weird stuff … dead people.”
“That’s usually what you’d see at a homicide scene.”
“Maybe this wasn’t a crime. Just something that happened in the war.”
“Just tell yourself we’re going down to free the anchor.” O’Brien dropped backwards into the sea.
Nick shook his head and mumbled, “Why did I volunteer to teach him how to find fish. He caught a monster.” Nick looked up and saw the tern fly from the bridge. “Not a good sign,” he said to Jason. “Lucky’s gone.” Then Nick dropped back in the sea. Max darted around the cockpit and barked.